[african writing and new media]

(live blogged)

2 presentations on african new media writing

first up - Nur Yaryare of the Sommali Afro European Media Project

• SAEMP an online community TV station based in Leicester
• currently piloting the broadcasting of a number of prerecorded channels
• programmes that are presented range in social health, education, faith, local events, news etc...
• see www.saemp.org.uk
• tackles image of arabs are terrorists with the online site and the paper newsletter
• see www.saemp.org.uk/videos.php for videos and podcasts

2nd up - Anieti Isong, current phd student with Prof. Sue Thomas as supervisor. He is a novelist and his first book is to be published this year

• see youtube video on kenya - big differences since the use of mobile phones (see kenya's mobile revolution - part 1)
  
• huge technological leaps happening in kenya including paying for items using mobile 'phones - "using phones as wallets"
• what is african writing -goes back to Chinua Achebe who published Things Fall Apart in 1958, father of modern african literature
• there was the Heinemann African Writers series started in 1962
• then wole soyinka awarded nobel prize in 1986
• emerging african writers liks helon habila, chimamanda, helen oyeyemi, pettina gappah, mary watson, toly ogunlesi, brian chikwava, afolabi, binyavanga wainaina, monica nyeko, chika unigwe
• these writers are willing to experiment: homosexuality, crime, take risks
• some journals - eclectica, open wide, author-me, story south, g21, in posse review
• but now african online journals - african writing online, farafina, african writers, new gong, kwani, sentinel, chimurenga
• key issues: how has the internet influed writing and what do the readers make of this?
• the reach for online stories is global - everywhere there is an internet connection
• see great video poem about nigerian going back home after studying in england - cifeozo, "homecoming"
• blogs as form of storytelling - Diary of a Randy Man: "I woke up in the middle of the night to discover the duvet on the floor. she was lying on her side facing me, her nightie had opened..."
• Confusednaijagirl - deals with child abuse
  

[transliteracy, m-learning & africa]

The title is quite a mouthful but still doesn't really get at the enormous potential that Alex Smith's manifesto for African Mobile Literacy suggests. Alex has had the brilliant idea to translate stories into African languages and make them available in formats available for dissemination via mobile (seems to tie in well to the PART group's research into transliteracy). The idea has come about due to the lack of access African young people have to read/hear stories in their home languages. An appalling idea if I imagine not having stories available in English or Italian. So, Alex has created a manifesto and is asking for help. Are there designers translators (perhaps Anietie Isong) and educators (I'm def. going to help out as best I can and draw on my Inanimate Alice Education Pack experience) out there who would like to be involved. If so, comment on Alex's blog post.

Thanks to Karina for the head's up.

More on mobile learning here from Leonard Low.